Like A Ship

When Neil Diamond drove the Arsenal team bus did he used to shout, ‘Coquelin, Ramsey. Get on board’?

What?

It’s all down hill from here, to be honest.

Is there anything to add? It was obvious from about February where Everton were going to finish, and indeed it seems that the league might as well officially retire seventh position in our honour.

It was fair like. The league don’t lie, after all. And it was made abundantly clear that there’s a lot of work to be done to go from being quite a bit better than the best of the rest up to overtaking any of the sides who represent, well, the rest of the best.

You only had to see Manchester United ‘arl arse’ the Europa League to realise that while youthful verve and fresh-faced impetuousness have their place, when it comes down to brass tacks (not to be confused with attacking brasses, again) there’s no substitute for genuinely decent players with bags of experience. That said, Ajax, who were made to look like a Championship side ‘renowned for playing some really nice stuff’, would have probably twatted us.

That Davy Klaassen we have been linked with was fucking last. He must have something about him to be a Dutch international and captain of Ajax like, but on that evidence he looked slow, weak and unable to exert any influence one of the biggest games of his career.

He’s certainly no Cuca Martina.

Are we still buying the international fullback? Let’s hope so, just to increase our global brand in Curacao. And obviously for the immense headline potential that his name brings.

‘Pressure Cuca!’ is the obvious one. Or even ‘Slow Cuca’ if he’s as bad as people keep saying.

Better than them though would be the masthead on the story if he got caught submitting a fraudulent tax return.

Clearly that first bit was written ages ago – we couldn’t be arsed finishing it at the time though. The Klaassen thing seems to ‘have legs’ and we’re reportedly willing to spend £25 million on him. You have to trust Koeman’s judgement – even if he did want to buy that French shitehawk who eventually chose to stink out White Hart Lane despite the clear and present warnings from pretty much every single Newcastle United supporter.

Having a gander at Klaassen’s ‘best bits’ on popular video sharing sites, he appears to be a sort of albino Tim Cahill. ‘Great at arriving late in the box’ and all that.

He certainly looks a bit of a gamble, unlike Malaga striker Sandro Ramirez who, at about £5 million, appears something of a steal. He looks absolutely mustard, and while we’re not going to get a straight replacement for the apparently Chelsea-bound Romelu Lukaku, the idea of the former Barcelona striker ‘spearheading’ a new-look Everton frontline – yeah, ‘spearheading’ – is quite an entertaining prospect.

Presumably, with Lukaku gone we’re going to play a bit differently, with the creating and scoring of goals not so much reliant on one, often-isolated centre-forward to act as target man, runner-of-the-channels, chaser-of-long-balls and chief-closer-down-of-goalies-and-centre-halves. The lazy twat.

Away from the transfer market, the Blues already have plenty of resources in reserve, underlined by their contribution to England Under-20s’ World Cup win at the weekend. Dominic Calvert-Lewin obviously grabbed the all-important goal in the final – and looked every bit as good as his strike partner, Liverpool’s Dominic Solanke – but we saw last season that he’s got a lot to improve upon before he’s considered a regular Premier League starter. Of all the kids on show, Ademola Lookman, who veritably burst onto the scene last season – yeah, ‘burst’ – but then became on oddly peripheral figure, looked the most mature, despite his Sunday school centre-parting, and seems ready to feature regularly in the top flight.

The infectiously energetic and wholehearted Jonjoe Kenny just needs as much first-team experience as possible, because is clearly going to be a belter.

Right then, shit has suddenly started moving. Everton have reportedly agreed a fee for Sunderland goalie Jordan Pickford. £22 million possibly rising to £30 million. That’s being reported as big money ‘for a keeper’, but given just how key that position is, and the lack of choice out there, it seems reasonable if he is as good as the Sunderland fans seem to think. Comparable with, say, Morgan Schneiderlin, for instance.

Regardless of his ‘stats’ – the last refuge of the gobshite – the Sunderland fans say Pickford singlehandedly kept them in loads of games last season and commend him for having more bottle than Paul McGrath’s blue bin. That’s the key thing with keepers, they have to have that inner belief. Because they all make mistakes – but the best ones have the ability to just shrug theirs off.

And not make absolutely loads as well, obviously.

Anyway, Pickford will be sound.

Fixtures are out now as well. Hilarious that Sky were previewing ‘fixture day’ as an actual thing, especially as the whole lot might as well be written in pavement in chalk, like those shit portraits of Sly Stallone and Madonna that fellas used to do on Church Street years ago, given the TV comapanies’ propensity for shifting them at the drop of a hat.

Anyway, we’re playing everyone twice.

Home and away.

Interesting.

Anyway, that’s all for now. We’ll update you again when Ross Barkley signs for Real Madrid, or something.